Tom Hanks has high praise for Cloud Atlas, plus a new featurette

The Wachowski/Tykwer film CLOUD ATLAS is looking like a very unique movie experience. While it is not odd for the star of a film to praise his own project, Tom Hanks recently did so while dissing some older projects.

At a recent gala where he received an honor from the Eli Wiesel's Foundation for Humanity, Hanks admitted that he has watched CLOUD ATLAS three times so far. He also added this nugget: "It's not like I'm pushing Turner and Hooch or Angels and Demons" — Hanks enthused, "I'm not allowed to say it's the most extraordinary movie I've ever seen, because one, I'm in it, and two, I've promoted a lot of movies ... but I think it is!"

Publicly calling out older movies is not something you hear all the time. Hanks strikes me as someone who can afford to be truthful about his work, so I trust what he has to say. Of course, a few years from now he could just as easily call CLOUD ATLAS a piece of shit.

Plot: CLOUD ATLAS explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave dramatically through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Each member of the ensemble appears in multiple roles as the stories move through time.

On a much more standard front, we have a new featurette that gives us the cast and crew discussing the unique interlocking nature of CLOUD ATLAS. Even if the film ends up collapsing under the sheer complexity of the story, it will be one of the more daring narrative experiments in recent film history. Having this many actors playing this many roles will definitely be something to witness.